Veeam Named a Leader Again

The NEW 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery once again recognizes Veeam as a Leader! This is Veeam’s 5th consecutive year included in the report. Veeam is the 4th largest 2016 global Backup and Recovery Software vendor for Storage Management according to the Gartner 2016 Market Share report.

Editor's Corner

SAVE THIS NEWSLETTER so you can refer back to it later for helpful tips, tools and resources!

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This week's newsletter catches up on the latest news and developments relating to privacy that may interest both IT professionals and those of us who are in various IT management positions. One particular topic that will likely be of interest to system administrators is the Intel Management Engine, and we're happy to report that some researchers seem to have found a way to disable the ME on Intel systems to prevent backdoor access to your organization's network and data. We also have several other items relating to privacy plus all the other usual stuff you expect each week from us--we hope we never disappoint!

Of course the best way of avoiding disappointment is simply to lower your expectations as Alice illustrates in the following classic Dilbert comic strip:

Ask Our Readers: WServerNews has almost 100,000 subscribers worldwide. That's a lot of expertise to tap into. Do you need help with some issue or need advice on something IT-related? Got a question you'd like us to toss out to our readers to try and answer? Email us at wsn@mtit.com

Got ears? Listen to our podcasts!

The TechGenix Xtreme podcast series explores everything information technology. We love to talk about the industry, what it means to be working in IT, and all the absurd and hilarious situations we encountered in our professional careers. Of course, prepare for a lot of hardcore tech stuff too, including servers, virtualization, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and more. You can listen to us on SoundCloud here:

Intel ME backdoor can be closed

In the summer of last year in Issue #1086 Remote management security and more we included a section titled "Possible security concerns with Intel AMT" in which we linked to several articles where security researchers described a vulnerability in the Intel Management Engine (ME) built into Intel processors that could provide a backdoor for attackers to break into your systems. Well yesterday I read that researchers from a company called Positive Technologies had discovered a way of disabling the ME component of Intel processors to close off any possible backdoor access it might provide. They found that they could disable the ME component using an undocumented feature in the processor firmware code. You can read more about their discovery in some detail on their blog here:

Hope this helps any readers who are concerned about the privacy and security of Intel systems they manage in their organizations.

Interview with Bruce Schneier

The Harvard Gazette recently interviewed well-known IT security expert Bruce Schneier about government and corporate surveillance and about what concerned users can do to protect their privacy. The interview is well worth reading, especially if you live in the USA:

"Angle told Reuters that iRobot, which made Roomba compatible with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant in March, could reach a deal to sell its maps to one or more of the Big Three in the next couple of years. Amazon declined to comment, and Apple and Google did not respond to requests for comment."

Gizmodo puts it more bluntly:

Roomba's Next Big Step Is Selling Maps of Your Home to the Highest Bidder

Send us your feedback

Got feedback about anything in this issue of WServerNews? Email us at wsn@mtit.com

Recommended for Learning

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At Microsoft today, we think of Windows as a service. Cloud-powered Windows Analytics have streamlined the upgrade to Windows 10 Creators Update for our employees around the world. Our experts share lessons learned and best practices for application compatibility testing, upgrading, readiness, and adopting Windows Hello and Always-On VPN connection.

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Azure Security and Compliance

This self-paced online course introduces you to Azure security and compliance – a topic of great importance to all types of organizations implementing cloud computing. Focusing on the Azure Trust Center, Azure Key Vault, and the Azure Security Center, the course will also briefly review built-in security features such as Azure storage keys and shared access signatures, network security groups, and identity management strategies. Enroll here:

IT Pro Fitness Corner

Get ready for Fit IT Pro News! (Your Editors)

As we mentioned last week we're pleased to announce that we'll soon be launching a new weekly newsletter called Fit IT Pro News. This new TechGenix newsletter will feature Yours Truly (Mitch and Ingrid Tulloch) as the Editors and will be similar in voice, style, and format to WServerNews except that it will be entirely devoted to helping IT pros get fit, lose weight, and live happily ever after as they face the daily stresses and workload of being in the gristmill of the IT profession. Each week Fit IT Pro News will include an in-depth editorial or article along with tips, reviews, industry news, and fun stuff--just like WServerNews! We also plan on doing some interviews with IT pros who have successfully transformed their life through exercise and good nutrition, and we'll have the same kind of Ask Our Readers section that's proved so popular with WServerNews so you can ask any question you like about exercise or nutrition and hear what other IT pros have to say on the subject! As subscribers to WServerNews you'll soon be receiving some sample issues of Fit IT Pro News so you can decide whether you want to continue to receive this exciting new newsletter. Our hope is that you will want to read it every single week and will also recommend it to all of your colleagues, employees, and friends!

Educate yourself (by Quentin Gurney)

Quentin is an enterprise architect working for a fortune 100 company.

Educate yourself. You can look at books like "eat this, not that" and find that some small choices can really add up. Like if you go for a rib eye all the time, switch to a fillet. Probably the same price, but far less calories in the fillet. If you douse everything with ranch, at least look at the bottle and see how many calories it has. Might shock you into trying that light vinaigrette.

Disclaimer: I'm not a certified fitness professional or nutritionist so take any suggestions made here "as is" with a grain of salt and a heaping supply of your own judgment. Help other readers of this newsletter lose weight and get fit by sending your own weightloss and/or fitness tips to us at wsn@mtit.com

Factoid of the Week

Last week's factoid and question was this:

When Canada held a competition to design its national flag, more than 10% of the entries featured a beaver. What other interesting fact(s) do you know about Canada?

Yes, I'm a Canadian and I'm sorry but I'm proud of it! Yes being Canadian I just had to apologize making that statement LOL…

Anyways, here are some of the more interesting responses we received to this question from our newsletter readers:

Don -- Canadians consume more Kraft Macaroni & Cheese dinners than any other nation in the world.

Pete -- It has a Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve (which was robbed back in 2012!) see:

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This Week's Tips

Hyper-V - Disable RDP Printer Mapping

To prevent the possibility of a faulty printer driver causing instability issues on a Hyper-V host you can disable RDP Printer Mapping on the host. If your Hyper-V hosts are located in their own OU in Active Directory you can accomplish this by setting the following Group Policy to the value Enabled:

Active Directory - Recover from extending schema

This tip was passed on to me by a colleague who has worked a lot with Active Directory. When you need to extend your Active Directory schema for some reason you might want to consider disabling both inbound and outbound replication on the domain controller that holds the Schema Master role prior to extending the schema and then try doing it only on the Schema Master domain controller. That way if the process goes wrong and your schema gets borked, you can disconnect the domain controller holding the Schema Master role from your network, seize the Schema Master role on another domain controller, and delete the old Schema Master objects from your directory.

Note that I haven't tried this method myself so I would advise testing this approach first in your test environment before adopting it for your production network. You may also want to read the section titled "Modifying the Schema" in the following TechNet article:

ConfigMrg - Queries for Windows 10

In SCCM the term queries (also called collection queries or WQL queries or whatever) refers to the ability to specify criteria for retrieving information from the database concerning sites, collections, inventory data, status messages, and other kinds of objects. Windows Management Experts (WME) has the following helpful blog post about how you can build collections for different Windows 10 versions:http://www.wservernews.com/go/flmld6ig/

Events Calendar

Do you know of any other IT conferences or events that you think readers of this newsletter might be interested in knowing about? Email us at wsn@mtit.com with the name, date, and location of the event along with the event URL.

HOT! Register for IT/Dev Connections early and save!!

IT/Dev Connections takes place Oct. 23-26 in San Francisco. It features more than 190 deep-dive technical sessions for IT Pros, Developers & DevOps. Register before Sept. 15 & save $400!

Other Articles of Interest

Tatarinov out as Citrix CEO in surprise shake-up

Citrix's latest CEO change magnified speculation that the company is up for sale and raised concerns about its product roadmap. Citrix has named its fourth CEO in less than two years, appointing its CFO to replace Kirill Tatarinov. The move has analysts and IT pros questioning the company's motivation.

WServerNews - Product of the Week

Veeam Named a Leader Again

The NEW 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery once again recognizes Veeam as a Leader! This is Veeam’s 5th consecutive year included in the report. Veeam is the 4th largest 2016 global Backup and Recovery Software vendor for Storage Management according to the Gartner 2016 Market Share report.

WServerNews - Editors

Mitch Tulloch is Senior Editor of WServerNews and is a widely recognized expert on Windows administration, deployment and virtualization. Mitch was lead author of the bestselling Windows 7Resource Kit and has been author or series editor for almost fifty books mostly published by Microsoft Press. Mitch is also a ten-time recipient of Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for his outstanding contributions in support of the global IT pro community. Mitch owns and runs an information technology content development business based in Winnipeg, Canada. For more information see www.mtit.com.

Ingrid Tulloch is Associate Editor of WServerNews and was co-author of the Microsoft Encyclopedia of Networking from Microsoft Press. Ingrid is also manages research and marketing for our content development business and has co-developed university-level courses in Information Security Management for a Masters of Business Administration program.